pbn's - Rented List
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Samurai Rebellion (1967)Jôi-uchi: Hairyô tsuma shimatsu
Framed within the classic Japanese conflict between giri (feudal loyalty) and ninjo (human feeling) Samurai Rebellion finds ultimate value in the mutual love of a husband and and wife... a rare enough moral resolution in any Japanese warrior film. This is made even more unusual by the fact that the director Kobayashi was a Marxist critic of society, who might have regarded romantic love as a bourgeois luxury. Mifune played Isaburo Sasahara, a man who has spent his life of self abnegation in the service of his lord. A fine swordsman, his only equal is Tatewaki Asano, played by Nakadai. Unused to protesting against personal or social injustice, Sasahara is finally roused by his lord's seizure of his daughter in law. Not only is he brought into direct opposition with his own clan, but with his former friend, Asano. - Director:
- Masaki Kobayashi
- Cast:
- Toshirô Mifune, Yôko Tsukasa, Gô Katô
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Shoplifters (2018)Manbiki Kazoku
After a successful shoplifting spree, Osamu (Lily Franky) and his son rescue a little girl in the freezing cold and invite her home with them. Osamu's wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) reluctantly agrees to shelter her. Although the family is poor, they live happily together until an unforeseen incident upsets the delicate balance they have created, revealing long-buried secrets... - Director:
- Hirokazu Koreeda
- Cast:
- Rirî Furankî, Sakura Andô, Mayu Matsuoka
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Come Drink with Me (1966)Da Zui Xia
A fearless heroine...a kung-fu master in hiding...a seemingly invincible villain...and a film that's universally regarded as one of the greatest ever made in Hong Kong. The heroine is Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei-Pei) She is been dispatched by her powerful father to rescue her brother who's been taken hostage by bandits. The kung-fu master is Fan Da-Pei (Hua Yueh); he may look like a drunken beggar but he's one of the best fighters around. Trouble is, the only man who can beat him is helping the bandits...'Come Drink with Me' shook up martial arts movies and influenced everyone from Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan and beyond. - Director:
- King Hu
- Cast:
- Pei-pei Cheng, Michael C. Pizzuto, Hua Yueh
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Failed comedian Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) encounters violent thugs while wandering the streets of Gotham City dressed as a clown. Disregarded by society Fleck begins a slow descent into madness as he transforms into the criminal mastermind known as Joker in director Todd Phillips' thrilling origin story. - Director:
- Todd Phillips
- Cast:
- Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz
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Journey to the Shore (2015)Kishibe no tabi
Mizuki's husband, Yusuke, drowned at sea three years ago. When he suddenly returns home, she, far from surprised, instead wonders what took him so long. Together they embark on a journey to meet the people who helped him on his journey in a world where the living and the dead coexist in an unassuming manner. - Director:
- Kiyoshi Kurosawa
- Cast:
- Eri Fukatsu, Tadanobu Asano, Masaaki Akahori
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Drawn from his own family memories, 'Distant Voices, Still Lives' is a strikingly intimate portrait of working class life in 1940's and 1950's Liverpool. Focusing on the real-life experiences of his mother, sisters and brother whose lives are thwarted by their brutal, sadistic father (a chilling performance by Pete Postlethwaite), the film shows us beauty and terror in equal measure. Davies uses the traditional family gatherings of births, marriages and deaths to paint a lyrical portrait of family life - of love, grief, and the highs and lows of being human, a 'poetry of the everyday' that is at once deeply autobiographical and universally resonant. - Director:
- Terence Davies
- Cast:
- Kenneth Horne, Freda Dowie, Kenneth Williams
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Nick and Nora Charles cordially invite you to bring your own alibi to The Thin Man, the jaunty whodunit that made William Powell and Myrna Loy the champagne elite of sleuthing, Bantering in the boudoir, enjoying walks with beloved dog Asta or matching each other highball for highball and clue for clue, they combined screwball romance with mystery. The resulting triumph nabbed four Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and spawned five sequels. Credit W.S. " Woody" Van Dyke for recognizing that Powell and Loy were ideal together and for getting the studio's okay by promising to shoot this splendid adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel in three weeks. He took 12 days. They didn't call him "One-Take Woody" for nothing. - Director:
- W.S. Van Dyke
- Cast:
- William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan
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Soldier of Orange (1977)Soldaat Van Oranje
Under the Nazi occupation of Holland, the Dutch people are forced to choose between collaboration and resistance. Armed with the knowledge that those, choices made by fellow countrymen will forever changed the fate of their homeland, six college students set out on an epic adventure that will involve courage, betrayal and survival. - Director:
- Paul Verhoeven
- Cast:
- Rutger Hauer, Jeroen Krabbé, Susan Penhaligon
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Soon after the huge success of 'Magnificent Obsession', Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson again teamed up with director Douglas Sirk for this heartwarming story of an attractive, wealthy New England widow who defies social constraints when she falls in love for a much younger man. When Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) falls in love with her sexy gardener, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), she becomes the target of small town gossip, while at the time incurring the wrath of her own children Kay (Gloria Talbott) and Ned (William Reynolds). The children and the town want Cary to lead a more conventional lifestyle than that offered by Ron. They would prefer that she spend the rest of her life in front of her new TV set, wed to Harvey (Conrad Nagel), a highly respected, wealthy - and boring - bachelor. Will she choose love or "respectability"? - Director:
- Douglas Sirk
- Cast:
- Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead
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Red Sorghum (1987)Hong gao liang
As outlined by an unseen, anonymous narrator, "Sorghum" tells of the life between "Grandmother" and "Grandfather". The woman is a bride-to-be en-route to an arranged wedding with an aging leprous winemaker, when she is saved from a bandit attack by one of the bearers of her sedan. After the untimely death of the winemaker, she is re-united with the bearer and they endure continuous travails with banditry, pestilence and war with Japanese. - Director:
- Yimou Zhang
- Cast:
- Li Gong, Wen Jiang, Rujun Ten
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Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 1994 Academy Awards, "The Wedding Banquet" brought Ang Lee to international prominence in this warm-hearted comedy depicting the farce behind a life led by deception. Wei-Tung and Simon are a gay couple living together in Manhattan. To deter the suspicions of Wei-Tung's parents, Simon suggests a marriage of convenience between Wei-Tung and Wei-Wei, an immigrant in need of a green card. When Wei-Tung's parents arrive in America insisting upon an elaborate wedding banquet, plans spiral out of control and ultimately threaten every one of Wei-Tung's relationships. - Director:
- Ang Lee
- Cast:
- Winston Chao, May Chin, Ya-lei Kuei
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Daisato (aka Dai-Nipponjin) lives alone with his cat in the suburbs of Tokyo, but has a secret existence as Japan’s first line of defence against attacks from a seemingly never-ending parade of bizarre monsters capable of reducing the city to rubble. Wacky, weird and wonderful, and with an amazing line-up of mutant monsters and creatures that make Godzilla seem like nothing more than a troublesome reptile, Big Man Japan is a superhero movie like no other. - Director:
- Hitoshi Matsumoto
- Cast:
- Hitoshi Matsumoto, Ai Nagano, Riki Takeuchi
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One of the greatest American films of the 1950s and a high point in the careers of both the lead actor James Mason and director Nicholas Ray. Mason gives a towering performance as Ed Avery, a happily married schoolteacher who agrees to take a new 'miracle drug' when diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease. It is not long before the drug begins producing malevolent and murderous side-effects that bring to the fore all of Ed's long-repressed frustrations with his life. Mason's support is, exceptional: Barbara Rush as Ed's devoted wife, Christopher Olsen a s his cruelly punished son and Walter Matthau as his faithful colleague. One of cinema's most persuasive portraits of psychological turmoil, the film also succeeds magnificently as searing melodrama and subversive social critique, with Ray, his scriptwriters and cinematographer achieving a perfect balance between emotional realism and exprer;sionist allegory. - Director:
- Nicholas Ray
- Cast:
- James Mason, Barbara Rush, Walter Matthau
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The year is 10,191, and four planets are embroiled in a secret plot to wrest control of the Spice Melange, the most precious substance in the universe and found only on the planet Arrakis. A feud between two powerful dynasties, House Atreides and House Harkonnen, is manipulated from afar by ruling powers that conspire to keep their grip on the spice. As the two families clash on Arrakis, Duke Atreides' son Paul (Kyle MacLachlan, in his screen debut) finds himself at the centre of an intergalactic war and an ancient prophecy that could change the galaxy forever. - Director:
- David Lynch
- Cast:
- Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen, Francesca Annis
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Before the Revolution (1964)Prima della rivoluzione
Young, middle-class and idealistic, Fabrizio struggles to break away from his bourgeois background.- Director:
- Bernardo Bertolucci
- Cast:
- Adriana Asti, Francesco Barilli, Allen Midgette
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